My brother recently recounted to me a story of a girl he knows who lives in Japan. She was awoken one night by a tapping on the window of her second floor apartment, and a strange shadow being cast into her bedroom. Rising from her bed, she cautiously stepped out onto her balcony, where a collection of her laundry, including underwear, was drying, hanging over the balcony. Much to her shock, she noticed a steel claw attempting to reach over the balcony and snag a pair of her knickers. Looking over the edge, she saw on the street below a young man with very thick glasses operating, with great difficulty, a long steel rod, over two stories high, with which he was attempting to steal an item of underwear. She shouted at him, he shouted out an embarrassed apology, and proceeded to race down the street, holding his two-storey pole out in front of him.

Of course, I was fascinated by the pole. Did he make it? Or is there someone manufacturing them? And are the Japanese so respectful of each other that everyone minds their own business when they pass an ordinary fella out for a late night stroll with his two-storey high knicker grabber?